


Never Woke Up

by monkiainen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Everyone Only Sees The Boy Who Lived, Gen, Ravenclaws are good, There are other people who matter than Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 19:58:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15150704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monkiainen/pseuds/monkiainen
Summary: Where everybody knows your name





	Never Woke Up

It's hard being on the same year than The Boy Who Lived, even if you're not in the same House with them. It's Harry Potter this, and Harry Potter that, and everyone else is just a prop. You are nothing if your name is not Harry Potter and you haven't seen Lord Voldemort killing an innocent Hufflepuff boy. 

_(His name was Cedric Diggory, but nobody even remembers that anymore. He was just someone who was in the same place with the one and only Harry Potter.)_

It doesn't matter even if you're one of the twelve students able to advance to N.E.W.T. Potions, because Harry Potter is there as well. The rumour is he's using some sort of trick to be better than anyone else in the class, because how come he's doing so much better under Slughorn's tutelage than Snape's? Everyone knows Snape is the best Potions Master there is, even if his teaching methods are sometimes a bit _questionable_. It's frustrating, and Slughorn does not even care because now he has Harry Potter in his ever-growing collection of famous and influential people. It's all about knowing the right people, it seems. And Terry is not the right person to be known, even if he's excellent in class.

So it's no wonder nobody remembers his name or where he's good at. Since he's no Potter he's nobody to the wizarding world. Nobody expects you to do great things, or defeat the Dark Lord because of some dusty prophecy and an event that took place in your childhood – you're just someone at Hogwarts, who goes to the same classes than the boy who is supposed to save you all.

Terry is not quite sure should he despise the common mind set the wizarding world has or not. On the other hand it's frustrating to be the top of your class and excelling in everything you do, only to notice that it's not enough to get people to _see_ you because all they can see is a dark-haired boy with a strange scar in his forehead. On the other hand it does take some pressure off him – he doesn't have to be the best, because nobody gives a damn about it. Terry decides that someday people will notice him for his own merits, and not because he's one of the shadows around Harry Potter.

Somehow the wizarding world makes it sound like the Potters are the only magical family worth mentioning. What about Terry's own ancestor, Webster Boot? He was one of the original founders of Ilvermony, and yet Terry is no one to the magical world. Everyone only talks about the Dark Lord being the descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself. As if being _bad_ somehow makes you superior to others.

The days keep on passing by, and yet nobody knows who Terry is or how good he is. It's annoying to be called "that Ravenclaw bloke who was in the Dumbledore's Army with Harry Potter and his friends" – he actually has a name, people! But nobody knows it, and they don't care finding it out. Harry Potter, the great hero, is the only person that matters to them. And to extent, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger because they are Harry's closest friends, and by friending them you might get to friend Harry too! _(Of course it's not true, but majority seldom cares about those things. They just want to be able to say "I know Harry Potter!")_

There is one place, though, where everybody knows who Terry is and treats him accordingly. The Ravenclaw Tower is the place where Terry is not an extra to a mainstream movie but someone people _know_ and rely on. They are his people, they know what he's worth and how much he works day and night to keep himself on the top. With his own House Terry understands the true meaning of the word "family" – not all the families are formed with blood ties but something else entirely.

The next time someone passes Terry by without giving him a second glance, Terry does not let it bother him. He knows who he is and what he's capable of. He does not need to be Harry Potter to be a good person.


End file.
